Tigers ace Verlander still struggling to find it'

DETROIT — It’s been missing most of the season, and time is getting short to find it.

Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander’s got a deadline for figuring out that “it” he’s been missing since April or May, at most a handful of remaining starts in what has been a frustrating regular season — just the second in his career that has included double-digit losses — before he’d better have it figured out and fixed.

“My deadline is the playoffs,” Verlander said after Tuesday’s rain-shortened 6-3 loss to the Oakland A’s, a team he beat twice in last year’s postseason. “Hopefully we get the chance to be there, and obviously that’s the deadline.

“Do I want to figure it out tomorrow, and be right back where I should be? Yeah. That might be the case, that might not. Like I said, the end of the season’s the absolute deadline when it needs to be right.”

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It wasn’t right Tuesday.

That was evident right from the start.

Verlander had already thrown 20 pitches by the time he got his first out in the first inning, and needed 44 to get through the two-run first inning, Jed Lowrie’s two-run double the costly hit. By pitches, anyway, it was the roughest inning of his career, according to Elias Sports Bureau.

After the Tigers went ahead in the bottom of the first, Verlander would later allow the A’s to tie it in the fourth with a two-out RBI double, then give up the go-ahead runs on a two-out, opposite field two-run homer by Brandon Moss.

“I don’t really know what to tell you. You watched the game, you all have a pretty good idea that he didn’t have very good command,” manager Jim Leyland said. “When you’ve got almost 50 pitches in the first inning and you’re Justin Verlander, you’re obviously not right. I think that’s fair to say. Just somehow, we’ve got to figure out how to get it going.”

So far, that hasn’t happened.

Oh, it happens in spurts, as it did in Tuesday’s start. After the first, Verlander needed just nine pitches in the second inning, and 10 in the third.

“Obviously, I wasn’t very good. I think I had good stuff early on, just the control wasn’t very good. After that, I felt like I really tried to slow things down and hit my spots. At times, felt really good, and at times felt out of synch,” Verlander said, noting that he found those proper mechanics at times.

“I was talking to Jeff (Jones, the pitching coach) about that tonight. Specifically when I started slowing down a little bit, try to pitch to contact, lower my pitch count, and he said he saw it. And I felt it. There were times when it felt great, and I told him, there’s a series of pitches where it’s like ‘God, that’s it!’ And then there’d be one or two where it would feel like my arm’s late, and kind of dragging behind. He said ‘I can see that from over here. Sometimes your arm gets up and quick, and it’s right there — bang. And sometimes it’s dragging behind.’

“When you’re a starting pitcher, everything’s about consistency. You need to be able to repeat. I know that, and it’s just a matter of getting there.”

It’s been something that’s been in-and-out from start to start, too.

A few starts ago, Verlander thought he’d found something, at least. But didn’t want too much made of it.

“I said I thought I’d found something that clicked. I never said I found ‘it.’ I told you guys to be wary of that. I didn’t want you to say ‘He’s found it! He’s back.’ No. It was one start, two starts, and that’s not a big enough sample size. Is it still something I think will help me? Yeah,” he said Tuesday.

“But it wasn’t like — it’s just not that simple. Like ‘Oh, got it. Boom. Done.’ I need to go out there and do it for a few innings, and feel like I’m able to repeat. I think that’s the biggest thing for me is to repeat my mechanics, repeat my delivery, execute my pitches.”

“Well, I think he’s — I’m always reluctant to say too much about it, because we don’t always agree on everything. I have my own philosophy. All I think Justin Verlander needs to do is use his stuff, and pitch with that arrogance that made him the great pitcher that he is,” manager Jim Leyland said Monday.

“I think sometimes, you just overthink the process. I think, in my opinion, he just needs to get it back to simplicity. I think that would be the best tonic. That’s just my opinion. I’m not saying I’m right. It’s my opinion.

“He’s a great pitcher, with great stuff, and that’s all he has to do, in my opinion.

“How you ever count it, or figure it out, you can sit there until the cows come home, but two and two is four.”

Verlander understands that concept, but he also understands that arrogance — or swagger, if you’d rather — is really rather dependent on effectiveness.

“Yeah, I would say so. I don’t think arrogance would be the exact word, but I know what he’s talking about,” Verlander said. “That comes with going out there and dominating, just kind of building on that. Not saying it’s not there, because it is. It’s just easier to see when I’m out there shutting them down.”

He’s done that at times. All too often, though, just the opposite has happened, too.

As it has often been this season — 59 times this season, he’s needed more than 20 pitches to get out of an inning, eight times 30 or more — it was the pitches adding up.

That spells lack of command.

So much of Justin Verlander’s season has reminded everyone — including him — of his 2008 season. Tuesday’s start resembled more the 2010 season: An early struggle, then turning on pitch conservation mode.

Reason for concern this late in the season?

“Sure,” Leyland said.

How much?

“We’ll leave it at that. Let’s not get any further. He’s pitched some real good games when we didn’t score for him. He’s just kind of a freak year,” Leyland said. “He certainly hasn’t had a bad year up to this point. He hasn’t had the type of year that we’re used to, but he certainly hasn’t had a bad year.”

So is Verlander concerned?

“No,” he said.

What keeps him from being concerned?

“I’ve been through this before. I’m a better pitcher now,” he said.

The ‘before’ was 2008, when Verlander led the majors with 17 losses, and didn’t yet know how to mitigate the struggles, letting things snowball on him. He never did figure out his problems until the season was over.

“Until then, it took the offseason. I don’t have that luxury this year. I know it’s going to click, and like I said back in ‘08, my confidence in myself never wavered, and it’s not now,” he said. “I think that’s a huge part of being able to work through something like this, is to be able to maintain your confidence in your ability and yourself, find the right way to do things.”

Since that year, though, Verlander has thrown more innings — and pitches — than almost any other pitcher on the planet. That workload has been a common scapegoat for Verlander’s struggles.

“Umm, I don’t know. I don’t feel fatigued. It’s not like at my age, I’m going to start dropping velocity or anything. That’s why I think it’s more of a mechanical thing than anything. And that’s why I’ve been working so hard to get it click and try to find it,” he said. “Just working as hard as you can. Like I said, I don’t know if a pitcher’s worked as hard as I have this year, throwing. I’ve worked my butt off, as much as I possibly can. At times, I’ve felt liked it clicked, and at times it hasn’t been there. It’s continuing to be a be a work in progress.”

He’s tried everything.

Tweaking more. Tweaking less. Backing off a bit.

“I tried that, too,” he said. “It’s one of the many, many, many, many things I’ve tried thus far. I don’t think it has an effect either way.”

So what’s the next step? Does he have another adjustment in mind?

“Nope. Just consistency. It’s to the point where it’s just go out and repeat, repeat, repeat and hopefully it clicks – like when talked about — when you step on the rubber for the game, and it’s there,” he said.

“For me, in the past, it’s always been one of those things that, once it’s there, it’s there. Find it and repeat it for innings at a time, and then it’s just ingrained, and you get in that groove. It’s what I’m searching for.”